Battery Drain on Sony A65

Stephen P

I'm having some issues with the battery on my Sony A65. Only bought it in May. I charged it to 100% at 10.30pm last night and tonight at 10.30pm with no use in the last 24hours the battery is at 71%.
Anyone here with similar issues with their Sony SLT? I'm going to give Conns a call tomorrow and hopefully drop it in at lunch time. Up to now the battery was OK, wasn't great compared to my old A200 which would last ages.

Gregor Samsa

Stephen P wrote: »

I'm having some issues with the battery on my Sony A65. Only bought it in May. I charged it to 100% at 10.30pm last night and tonight at 10.30pm with no use in the last 24hours the battery is at 71%.
Anyone here with similar issues with their Sony SLT? I'm going to give Conns a call tomorrow and hopefully drop it in at lunch time. Up to now the battery was OK, wasn't great compared to my old A200 which would last ages.

Is the battery drain happening when he camera is switched off, or in standby mode?

I'm on my phone now, so won't write too detailed a post, but possible reasons could be:

Eye Start setting turned on, and camera left in close proximity to something that's triggering the sensor beside the eyepiece.

GPS turned on.

Firmware. Latest firmware update fixed sone bugs to do with shutdown. What version are you on?

I've an A77, and I have no problem with battery drain like you describe. Battery life isn't as good as the A100, A330 and A550 I had before, but that's probably down to the EVF (OVFs dont require power) and live view basically being on all the time (on account is the SLT). But I can leave the camera off on in standby for days at a time, and have no issues with drain.

Post back with your firmware version and your GPS & Eyestart settings, and I'll have a think about any other possible causes and post back tomorrow.

Stephen P

Thanks for your reply, only seen it now for some reason

I went into Conns and they gave me a different battery to try over the weekend, I've charged it to 100% now and will check again tomorrow to see if the battery drained at all.
I turned off GPS before I began testing it a couple of days ago. The camera has been turned off, I checked this a few times to make sure nothing in its bag knocked it on.
I'm on firmware ver. 1.05.
Eye-Start AF is On but with the camera off this shouldn't be an issue, right?

Conns said if it's not the battery they will need to send the camera off to Sony, I hope that's not the case :mad:

phutyle wrote: »

Is the battery drain happening when he camera is switched off, or in standby mode?

I'm on my phone now, so won't write too detailed a post, but possible reasons could be:

Eye Start setting turned on, and camera left in close proximity to something that's triggering the sensor beside the eyepiece.

GPS turned on.

Firmware. Latest firmware update fixed sone bugs to do with shutdown. What version are you on?

I've an A77, and I have no problem with battery drain like you describe. Battery life isn't as good as the A100, A330 and A550 I had before, but that's probably down to the EVF (OVFs dont require power) and live view basically being on all the time (on account is the SLT). But I can leave the camera off on in standby for days at a time, and have no issues with drain.

Post back with your firmware version and your GPS & Eyestart settings, and I'll have a think about any other possible causes and post back tomorrow.

Gregor Samsa

Yeah, you're on the latest firmware, and EyeStart won't be on if the camera is physically switched off.

Fingers crossed the battery is the issue. Let us know how you get on.

Dazzling D

My initial tthinking would be that it is the GPS setting

Stephen P

OK so, in the past 24 hours the replacement battery has drained by 14%. Not quite dramatic as the other battery but definitely not good. I'm going to leave it out of the camera for 24 hours and see if there's any drain.

Gregor Samsa

That's certainly not good.

You might have already seen this: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3222597

Unfortunately it contains no real solutions, but it seems you're not the only one with this problem.

Stephen P

I seen that the other day, thanks.
Apart from that link there doesn't seem to be a lot of problems with the A65 (battery wise) from what I've looked up.

For the inconvenience Sony might give me the A77 as a goodwill gesture...yeah righ!

phutyle wrote: »

That's certainly not good.

You might have already seen this: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3222597

Unfortunately it contains no real solutions, but it seems you're not the only one with this problem.

Stephen P

There was no drain on the battery when it was left out of the camera for 24 hours. I'm bringing the camera back to Conns today for repair/replacement.

Stephen P

Conns took my camera off me and gave me an A57 as a replacement until mine is fixed. The A57 is quite similiar to the A65.